GPUs and their applications can be a complex topic. This week I came across an insideHPC article of NVIDIA presenting an introduction into the GPU technology and usage models. So, if you are interested in an introduction of what GPUs can do for you, look no further!

Picture from NVIDIA slidecast: GPU Technology and Usage Models

Acceleware latest webinar: Watch Acceleware Product Manager Chris Mason discussing the benefits of using GPU clusters for performance and power savings:

The Management and Staff at Acceleware would like to extend their warmest wishes to you and your families this holiday season. As 2011 approaches, we would like to thank you for your continued loyalty and support. We look forward to another exciting New Year at Acceleware.

SuperComputing 10, the last of Acceleware’s three big fall tradeshows took place last week in New Orleans. The show also coincided with our CUDA training class in Tampa, Florida, resulting in a number of Accelewarians who were able to enjoy being in a warm climate as the first big deep freeze settled over our home city of Calgary.

Beneficially for the business (but a bit disappointing for us personally) is that we had very little time outside to enjoy the sunshine as the show was very busy in New Orleans and our CUDA training classes are always a full day of learning.
Acceleware was located on the show floor close to one of our key partners, NVIDIA, where the traffic was brisk throughout all four days of the show. Visitors to our booth were able to try out the Acceleware performance calculator to generate numbers that reveal how much faster their codes could run after they have been ‘Accelerized,’ and earned a free Starbucks coupon for their effort. Also at the booth we hosted a strong contingent of existing customers and new prospects from the oil and gas industry as the location of the show in New Orleans helped to bring out the energy crowd. There were also many people gathering information about our Electromagnetic solvers and another big hit was information on the advanced CUDA/OpenCL training classes. With the proliferation of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs throughout the show floor this year, the demand to learn how to program GPUs efficiently continues to grow.

At the 2010 Society of Exploration Geophysicists Meeting in Denver last week, Acceleware Research Scientist Dr. Damir Pasalic was concerned about the energy he would need to present two technical papers that are part of our work on Reverse Time Migration (RTM): "Convolutional perfectly matched layer for isotropic and anisotropic acoustic wave equations" and "A discontinuous mesh finite difference scheme for acoustic wave equations.”

SEMCAD workshop hosted by Dymstec and sponsored by SPEAG and Acceleware, October 2010

Last week I traveled to Seoul, Korea to take part in various customer events organized by NVIDIA and Dymstec, a distributor of Acceleware technology in Korea. The trip was organized along with one of our partners in EM simulation, SPEAG from Zurich. It was my first actual visit to Korea, as many times before I have transited through the airports at Kimpo and Incheon, but never have been able to experience the non-airport version of Korea. I was highly impressed by what Seoul offers in terms of a dynamic and technically advanced city. For example, the GPS systems in cars are equipped with 3D fly-through views and receive multiple inputs of information from traffic to ETAs. Another interesting feature of the GPS systems is the ability to watch live TV though I was wondering about the sanity of that as several cars passed me the baseball game playing on the dash. From a general economic activity point of view, I must have seen at least 200 building cranes during the six day visit creating new forests of office towers and condo buildings.

I know that Acceleware has not posted any blog entries since the end of June…..let me try to explain why. In this part of the world, summer is short. This year our summer weather has created a new definition for short as May and June were cool and rainy, and July was not much better. However during our summer months we spend as much time outside as possible soaking up the long summer days and the blogging production falls off accordingly. Now that September is here, it is time to resume normal programming. Here is a quick round-up the Acceleware fall schedule of activities.

SAR, Cell Phones, and San Francisco

An interesting article (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/san-francisco-passes-cell...) came across my desk this week. It talks about a recent vote in by the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco requiring that cell phone retailers post the specific absorption rate (SAR) for all cellular handsets that they sell. The article caught my attention because many cell phone manufactures use our FDTD libraries to model the electromagnetic field strengths, which are used to calculate SAR as a post processing step.

What is SAR?

SAR is a measure of the amount of power that is absorbed by a human body tissue in Watts/kg, averaged over a 1 gram or 10 gram mass of tissue. The FCC and other national government organizations are responsible for defining the safety limits for normal use.

How do you Measure SAR?

Because it is impractical (and inhumane) to insert a probe into someone’s head while they are using a cell phone, we rely on models to determine how much power the human body is absorbing. Since the absorption rate is highly dependent on the position of the cell phone antenna designers will run hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of simulations to determine the SAR value for a given phone.

The other way to measure the SAR value is to create a physical model of the human head and use probes to measure the value. Ideally, simulations match the model results. Major discrepancies need to be resolved before the phone is sent to manufacturing.

Is Lower Better?

Sure. But if the value is too low, your phone will start dropping calls. Typically, antenna designers will work to minimize SAR while maximizing signal strength from the antenna.

During a seismic survey, each shot sends a wave propagating through the Earth, while receivers on the surface listen for reflections as that wave bounces off of geologic layers. Real-world geology can be extremely complex, and because of the different wave propagation velocities the of the different layers, the wave never expands in simple circles, like ripples in a pond. Instead it is scattered off of high-velocity contrasts, refracts around slower regions, is focused into beams.

The purpose of Reverse Time Migration (RTM) is to take those incredibly complex wavefields, as recorded at the surface, and form an image of the underlying geological structure.

The images shown here are Illumination Maps, which show how much energy from a single shot reached each point in the subsurface.

Click to enlarge

There were several information pieces that caught my attention over the last few weeks that seemed to be worthy of sharing. As one of the few non-technical people here at Acceleware, what I appreciated about all of these snipets was how clearly they affirmed the value of the technologies that we are working on. Two of these pieces have a connection with NVIDIA but the third is Intel, so that provides a good balance.

The first one occurred May 18th with IBM and NVIDIA announcing that Big Blue would start incorporating GPU technology in their iDataPlex Servers. It is another great endorsement for using GPUs as part of the processing engines in modern data centers. Check out the video with Scott Denham who gives a very concise overview of the multiple benefits of GPUs.